Live From Brussels: Abrupt, Artonov, Toots Jazz Club & The Music Village

Daniel Proietto & Tsubasa Hori
Artonov Lab
October 6, 2025

Artonov is a festival dedicated to spaces and places and multi-faceted artistic expressions, music always representing a significant chunk of its highly diverse programming. It's a nomadic festival, dedicated to using buildings with an Art Nouveau or Art Deco character, and sometimes shifting forward in time to edifices with later architectural individuality. This performance transpired in the Artonov Lab, which was opened in 2024, finally giving the festival a core headquarters in its 10th year. It's a revivified building, built in at least 1865, when it was converted into a ballroom. Now, following recent transformation from a run-down decline, its interior has a modern look, with fine minimalist taste, located just opposite the Horta Museum.

Following a pair of short films, the early evening climaxed upstairs with a performance by dancer Daniel Prioietto and Japanese taiko percussionist Tsubasa Hori, from Kyoto, inspired by the transgender woes of Argentina, specifically involving threatened or actual violence. Seven mushroom-hood bells tolled and shimmered, via extreme bowing and a single thin mallet, their resonances hanging around forevermore. These were augmented by finger-bells, for vibrational supremacy. Then the near-nude Prioietto gyrated, arms aloft and twining, a small drum introduced, as densities accumulated. Hori also began playing koto and singing, more restful after some harrowing vocals had startled. Prioietto displayed an impressive malleability, managing to convey brutalised victimhood with a determined sense of narcissistic fortitude, strongly influenced by Japanese butoh tradition.

The Yo Hes Quartet
The Music Village
October 6, 2025

Contrastingly, the night's next stop involved a tribute gig to the revered alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, at the Brussels home of mainline jazz, just off the Grand Place itself. Probably not officially his own quartet, the altoman Yo Hes fronted a group that included Levi Harvey (piano), Gabriel Sauzay (bass) and Armando Luongo (drums). All of them displayed a fine momentum, with a continuous rush of breezy soloing, some finger-twisting piano, jumping back to land on the theme. Hes slipped in one of his own tunes, which was more mellifluously flowing, relaxedly contrasting with the hectic Cannonball repertoire. More conventional too. Next up, "Work Song" (actually composed by brother Nat) was given a roiling, intense treatment. Then, Hes sang in a sweet voice, interpreting "I Cover The Waterfront," wistfully beseeching. A tumbling chase ensued with Tadd Dameron's "Our Delight," with Hes capering fleetly on tearaway alto, shuffling down to the blues straight afterwards, with "Spontaneous Combustion," which could be described more as soul-blues, with squealin' and honkin' flyaways, leading to an unstoppable encore call-back with "Willow Weep For Me," a slinky conclusion provided.

Collective Le Chant Du Monde
Institute Of Natural Sciences
October 7, 2025

Early the next evening, Artonov could be counted on to switch with another big contrast, a musical performance/installation in the dinosaur-skeleton wing of the out-of- the-way Institute Of Natural Sciences. Collective Le Chant Du Monde realised the composition of Alice Hebborn and Pierre Slinckx, going beyond conventional instruments to include large constructions, formed out of the twisting branches of dead trees. Electronics were allowed to enter this natural world. Banging drums reached overload, but then cut to near silence, in this bones-galore environment, low-lit, with the audience spread out across a wide space, although mostly contained in a still quite expansive middle-area. Bowed instruments were faintly stroked, but there was a massive bell hanging high up with the dinosaur relics, and a harp-like instrument down below. Brushes on a snare started up with their skittering beat, and a vibraphone-like instrument, looking like it was constructed with glass or plastic, recalled the inventions of Harry Partch. A subliminal bass presence frequently issued from the electronics desk, eventually quaking more noticeably.

The Geoffrey Fiorese Trio
The Music Village
October 7, 2025

Back to the club again, afterwards, to catch the regular Tuesday jam session, this time hosted by the pianist Geoffrey Fiorese, packed with an abundance of standards, but minutes in suddenly including Ornette Coleman (something from New York Is Now?), hardly a familiar presence on such a scene as this. This involved a mallet rotation around the drum set, courtesy of Umberto Odone, then some defined piano-jabbing from the leader, making a gradually defined progress, with embellishments by guesting violin and clarinet (as the jam was coming into existence). Walls became malleable as the session continued until around The Witching Hour, this week particularly imbued with a strong momentum of successive soloists and combinations.

Echofarmer/Rival Consoles
Bozar
October 8, 2025

Another Brussels festival running concurrently with Artonov was Abrupt, which is kind of a re-named incarnation of the already well-established (mostly) electronic music festival Nuits Sonores, presumably revivified to refresh its individuality. The core Brussels arts venue Bozar has always been one of the chief haunts for Abrupt, and its basement joint Terarken was used on two consecutive nights. It's a long, narrow room, with a bar right at the end, moved around since its recent refurbishment. The London electronicist Rival Consoles was more conventional than expected, but the local Echofarmer side-stepped a foundation beat-pulse with frequent off-kilter interjections, providing a more creative cumulative mass.

Pino Palladino/Blake Mills/Sam Gendel/Chris Dave
Bozar
October 9, 2025

The next night offered a foursome that all played completely hands-on instruments, in the virtuoso fashion. The Welsh (mostly session) fretless bassist Pino Palladino and (mostly producer) guitarist Blake Mills lately began working together and released the already classic Notes With Attachments, one of the best LPs of 2021. Now they had its That Wasn't A Dream follow-up's material to dip into as well, joined by the starry pair of ubiquitous reedsman Sam Gendel and ubiquitous drummer Chris Dave. This was a muso's heaven, and the gig was heavily sold-out. Initially, your scribe had an only slightly obscured view from right down at the standing-cluster right-hand speaker-stack side, but for the end-run stretch he reconvened to the absolute rear-room seated tier-wedge. Both of these radical positions possessed their own distinct advantages.

What is it with the slippery fretless bass in Wales? One of the globe's other prime veteran proponents, Percy Jones, also hails from that fabled land. Despite the high grade of players here, it's Palladino that remains the key sonic architect, with his oily textures and trickster rhythms. The four interfaced with grace, sitting mostly, which didn't seem appropriate when most of the crowd was standing. In fact, this probably should have been an all-seated show anyway, given its musical orientation. The bass and drums tended towards directness, the guitar and soprano saxophone more likely to be draped with effects. The four resisted overt excitement for quite a while, with severe pace and space event- rationing, the set being way less groovesome than the toons of their debut spinner. Gendel began to spend too much time on his flutey e.w.i., but the capacity crowd remained visibly captivated. Oddly enough, your scribe's move to the rear zone actually revealed more detail and bass pulse in the sonic spread, as the quartet upped their way towards a more dynamic climax.

The Seba Colson Quintet
Toots Jazz Club
October 9, 2025

Toots Jazz Club is fairly new in town, extremely well located, being only a street away from the Grand Place. The Music Village and Toots can easily be taken in by club- hopping tourists. The first thing to notice about Toots is its marked lack of friendliness towards journalists on the door, as your scribe rolled up for the second set of local trumpeter Seba Colson. The second thing is that this is a well-converted old sepia-toned bar, with liberal wooden fittings and old school aura that's very well suited to an intimate jazz club inhabitation. The leader's into bebop and hard bop, joined by saxophone, piano, bass and drums, sometimes slipping in original material amongst the familiar chestnuts. The horns were expressive, with solos on trumpet and tenor, and before resuming the speedster chase, Colson turned in a vocal number in the Chet Baker style. An original bossa nova followed, penned as recently as the previous weekend, then tenor saxophonist Nero Vergaet weighed in with a pugilistic bite, head and body bobbing side to side, above an insistently throbbing bass (Toon Rumen) and a flyaway piano solo (Milan Verbist). There was a calming down afterwards, before the set's conclusion, with "Transience."